Some movies are described as explosive: this is positively eardrum-perforating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2012

The statistic that 8,000 Argentinians die in traffic accidents every year gives his film a context, but Trapero didn't need to work quite so hard to prove it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2012

The film's bitterness of vision may owe as much to style as to content: this is not King Lear, it does not go deep. But a vision of sorts it is, harsh and haunting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2012

Bruising, moving and utterly compelling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2012

... A film where the question of how far someone can stray before they’re lost forever isn’t just a matter of narrative trickery but a genuinely soulful, gnawingly tense moral challenge.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2012

It's relatively effective as a thriller, but rarely welcomes the viewer into its world of legalities and despair.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 27, 2012

The desolate Edward Hopper nightscapes provide an effective context...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 6, 2012

The Argentinean actor Ricardo Darín (The Secret in Their Eyes) has an almost Bogart-like gift for playing world-weary rotters with a core of nobility.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2011

This is a film that's musical with the cracking of bones and crashing of cars.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2011

A no-frills version of a perennial dark story: how love of a sort can take root in a festering place.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2011

A stark, compelling crime drama, shot in lurid close-ups and leading inexorably toward a devastating end.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2011

In spite of a commendably nasty noir mentality a la The Postman Always Rings Twice, Carancho is flat-out underwhelming.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 16, 2011

"Carancho" was Argentina's nominee for the foreign-language Oscar. It didn't make the short list, but life isn't always fair.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 11, 2011

At heart an unlovely love story illuminated by sudden flares of violence, the film reeks of hopelessness and moral destitution, offering its lovers few means of escape.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2011

You can see the influence of 1950s film noir, the ballsy renegades of 1970s American cinema (especially early Martin Scorsese) and a little touch of the Coen brothers.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2011

Hard to watch, though fascinating for its performances, and the bottomless corruption it portrays.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2011

Even when tackling more mainstream fare, Trapero does it with integrity...

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 10, 2011

[Trapero's] stylistic showmanship eventually pays off in a bravura single-take climax, his camera navigating physical and emotional spaces with the fatalistic urgency and despair of film noir.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2011